This article analyzes how proposals related to technology, work and education in the high school curriculum reform have been incorporated by schools. An analysis of official documents, especially the Curriculum Guidelines and Parameters for this level of teaching, indicates that the main proposals are the association between knowledge and its technologies and the organization of the curriculum based on the prescription of competencies. A questionnaire was sent to high school institutions in the city of Curitiba (state of Paraná) to discover which of these proposals the schools took as references, which changes they tried to introduce as a response to those proposals, and how they have incorporated the regulatory directives into their pedagogical proposals. Analysis of the answers supports the hypothesis that the appropriation of the official curriculum policy is not uniform and there is evidence of different incorporation processes which give the reform only a limited reach.